Most church leaders have a deep desire for people to experience life change. We feel the burden Dallas Willard expresses in Spirit of the Disciplines: "If the faithful devotees to our ministries are not transformed in the substance of their lives to the full range of Christlikeness, they are being failed by what we are teaching them." But how do we serve them best? Specifically, how do we structure teaching times, select curriculum, and create an environment in which people can truly grow?
Spiritual growth is dynamic and complex, but I am convinced that six realities are essential to authentic spiritual transformation:
- The work of the Holy Spirit
- Life situations and experiences, especially trials
- Time—spiritual growth is a process
- A biblical belief system/set of convictions/worldview
- Consistent human examples/mentors/leaders who incarnate this way of life
- A community with whom to journey together
We have very limited control over the first three elements. However, we can influence the last three. At Fellowship Church, we do that by focusing our ministries on the grand story of Scripture and coordinating learning at the individual, corporate, and small group levels.
Connecting to the Big Story
The grand story of Scripture is vital, because if we lose touch with the biblical story, we lose touch with God. Unfortunately, most spiritual formation resources simply don't make this connection. They typically challenge people to get God into their lives through a prescribed set of spiritual disciplines, but simply adding more of God to our lives often misses the point. We are called to link our lives to God's life, to line up our smaller story with his grand story.
For this reason, we teach people the grand story of the Bible (believing) and help them see how what we do (behaving) and who we are (becoming) integrate into each part of the story. For example, our belief that God is both great and good draws us into praise, gratitude, and obedience—a behavior called Christian worship. Together this belief and behavior cultivate in us the character quality of purity as we realize that worship is not reserved for Sunday services but is a lifestyle.
Connecting sermon and small groups
To reinforce the connection between Sunday morning and everyday life, we use an integrated teaching approach that focuses everyone on the same passage each week, as opposed to numbing people with five or six different studies in our various mid-week programs and ministries. We encourage everyone to complete a brief interactive lesson on their own during the week. Then on Sunday we preach an inspirational sermon on the focal passage for that lesson.
We try to address the other two "controllable" elements—consistent human examples and community—through small groups. The group leaders serve as the human examples and mentors who incarnate the biblical story. There is no substitute for mature small group leaders.
Connecting with each other
The small group members become the community with whom we live out God's story. Groups of 10–20 people gather once a week to eat a meal together, share life, pray, and encourage each other to live out God's story. In our time together, we discuss the insights we had as we studied alone during the week, how those insights were influenced or altered by the sermon, and how we might put these lessons into action in our daily lives. Because the entire group has been engaged in the same biblical passage, has heard the same sermon, and is working through the same material during the week, the process results in a corporate, not merely individual, recalibration to the biblical story.
As we have moved beyond skimming bits and pieces of the Bible to connecting to God's grand story in what we believe, how we behave, and who we are becoming, we have seen life change. It hasn't been flashy or fast, but we are seeing God do a deep and powerful work among his people.
J. Scott Duvall is professor of New Testament at Ouachita Baptist University and a pastor of Fellowship Church in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. The curriculum discussed above has been published as Experiencing God's Story of Life and Hope.
Copyright © 2009 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
